else, and that was the remarkable power you had, and have
always retained, of drawing out the best in others. Intellectual
power or force of character (or whatever you like to call it) is so
often self-centred as to lose half its value. With you, however,
it was different. You always appeared to be, and I think
genuinely were, quite as much interested in other people's
ideas or personalities as in your own -- or even more interested.
You listened to them, you questioned, you put them on their
mettle, you helped them out by interpreting their crude or
half-impressed thoughts, and all this without a trace of flattery
or patronage. By this, and by your generous over-apprecia-
tion of them, you inspired your friends with greater confidence
in themselves than they would otherwise have had. In your
company they were, or felt themselves, really better men.
To one of my disposition, at all events, this was a source of
extraordinary encouragement and help. I felt it from the first,
and I cannot omit mentioning it in my attempt to describe
what you were like when we met at Oxford. I am afraid it is a
poor attempt, and wanting in details which contemporary
records, if they had existed, could alone have supplied. But I
hope you may find something in it which will suit your purpose.
I don't think, after all, you have changed as much as most
people in the forty-odd years I have known you!

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